Stylizing stylization: The case of Aigia Fuxia

Abstract

This paper examines language stylization in Aigia Fuxia ('The FuchsiaGoat'), a highly popular Greek Cypriot sitcom, where the (imagined) linguistic and socio-cultural 'self' of a dialect-speaking community is subjected to extreme and aberrant stylization. The overarching filmic and generic trademark of Aigia Fuxia is its consistent pinpointing of its intertextual relations to well-established Cypriot comedic media genres, in which the language and the lifestyle of the 'rural' part of the speech community is performed following specific generic and linguistic conventions. Aigia Fuxia dismantles these conventions through the artful deployment of a medley of content, generic, and filmic choices and, crucially, through extreme dialect stylization, ultimately a 'de-authenticizing' move, especially as it goes hand-in-hand with other linguistic choices, which are dissonant both in terms of genre and in terms of the series' baseline stylized dialect register. In this paper we show that such bricolage generates rich interpretive potential: from a filmic perspective, the use of techniques which may befuddle viewer expectations regarding the genre cunningly pinpoint the processes whereby generic and narrative conventions are constructed; from a sociolinguistic perspective, the extreme stylization of the Cypriot Greek dialect may be seen as performative destabilizing of dominant folk linguistic constructs about standard language and dialect in a context of dialect leveling and emergent diglossia resolution.

Revisiting intertextuality and humour: fresh perspectives on a classic topic

“…In addition, creating intertextual links among genres and the ensuing generic mixing contribute to the emergence of novel or creative humorous texts and genres. This "generic crossing in a text" (Coutinho & Miranda 2009: 44) has been shown to constitute one of the most common strategies for the production of humour (see among others Tsiplakou & Ioannidou 2012;Antonopoulou et al 2015;Archakis et al 2015;Tsakona 2020aTsakona : 66-69, 100-102, 2020b; Shilikhina this issue). Needless to say, the processing of humorous texts is easier for those who are already familiar with other humorous texts coming from the same cycle, belonging to the same humorous genres, or constituting the 'original' source on which the derivative meta-joke was built.…”

THE REALLOCATION OF [and#669;] IN CYPRIOT GREEK

“…In fact they are so good, that for certain speakers, or in certain occasions, they do not pass as adequately Cypriot, and must be "enhanced" (cf. Tsiplakou & Ioannidou 2012 In this respect Cypriot Greek is not that different from other regional varieties of the language. The standard, as all standards, is an idealized abstraction that no one actually speaks and serves as an umbrella under which the varieties can be united.…”

Playful language alternation in an online discussion forum: The example of digital code plays

“…They also demonstrate their advanced bilingual competence and creativity. Furthermore, and similar to the practice of bricolage or hyperdialectism discussed by Tsiplakou and Ioannidou (2012), this kind of linguistic violation serves to destabilise the ideological notion of language purity endorsed by the purist movement (Pfalzgraf, 2006;Spitzmüller, 2005Spitzmüller, , 2007 However, the topic of mixing the two languages seems to be a recurrent issue, often directly addressed as the title of the thread Germenglish shows. It was started by a user who was new to this community.…”

“…Regardless of the level of language proficiency, multilinguals engage in various types of translanguaging ranging from code-switching to translation and transliteration to create multilingual bricolages (cf. Tsiplakou and Ioannidou, 2012) which, consciously or unconsciously, disobey the expected norms of linguistic behaviour such as, for example, the double monolingualism norm or the integrated bilingualism norm. In doing so, multilinguals demonstrate their creativity and criticality, as Li (2011) shows in analysis of translanguaging practices in urban contexts.…”